Chapter 5: Sniper Trap

Evan bounced in his seat as the IFV smashed through a little grove of burnt tree stumps, watching through the external camera feeds as they approached the LZ. They had put down in a lake bed that had been completely evaporated by the heat of the orbital bombardment, leaving a large bowl about two kilometers across that was devoid of the carbonized forests that littered the surrounding terrain. He noted that some of the trees here were taller, more intact than those that were now behind them, perhaps indicating that they had been further from the nearest blast. Many had been stripped of their branches, but most were still just as tall as they had been when they were alive, creating a ghostly landscape of black pillars that were shrouded in ash and dust. There was no color anywhere – only a few burning embers giving the scene a splash of red – creating an eerily monotone look. It was like they were driving into a sketch of a misty forest in charcoal.

They descended an incline, what had once been the shore of the lake, the mud and silt that had lined its bottom now cracked and desiccated. Evan turned to watch as several tanks and another IFV followed behind them, kicking more ash into the air.

“The scout company hasn’t found anything except burnt-out vehicles and dead Marines,” Simmons muttered, his eyes on his wrist display as the IFV bounced along. “Our orders are to fan out from the middle of the lake and get eyes on the ground, see if we can find any survivors.”

“Wait, the whole fuckin’ LZ has been wiped out?” Hernandez asked in disbelief. “Nobody from Artillery or Foxtrot made it?”

“That hasn’t been determined yet, but it looks bad,” Simmons replied. He shared a wordless glance with Evan, perhaps remembering the conversation they’d had about the Red King. Nothing about this felt right.

“We haven’t lost an entire company since the first landing, have we?” Garcia asked warily. “What the fuck did the Bugs hit them with?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Simmons replied.

Ahead of them, Evan spotted the glow of flames, a rising plume of smoke giving away their destination. As they neared, the artillery company came into view – or rather, what was left of the artillery company. Hotel was comprised of eight Avalanches, self-propelled artillery guns equipped with electromagnetic cannons that were based on the Kodiak’s chassis. Now, the vehicles lay in ruins, little more than blackened shells with fires still smoldering inside most of them. There was a disabled IFV nearby, too, its armored hull ripped open like someone had taken a giant can opener to it. There were a few bodies scattered in the ash, Evan picking out Marines and Drones alike.

One of the Timberwolfs was parked nearby, a six-wheeled scout vehicle with a small gun blister on the roof. The troop bay at the rear was open, and a couple of its crew members were standing nearby, waving for the convoy to stop. The IFV rolled to a halt, Simmons leading his squad down the ramp as it opened, making his way over to the two crewmen. They were wearing pressure suits and flak jackets, standard equipment for vehicle crews, and they were holding XMRs with short barrels and folding stocks.

“What the hell happened here?” Simmons asked, stepping around the charred corpse of a Marine. This battle was fresh enough that nobody had even attempted to recover any bodies yet. There was no need to check his vitals – not with that slagged hole in his visor. Evan was picking up a few nearby signals, but what IFF tags were even working anymore were kicking out KIA markers, indicating that the wearer of the suit was deceased.

“Anything to report?” Simmons demanded, the two scouts sharing concerned glances. “We can’t have been gone for more than six hours.”

“Something hit the LZ hard,” one of the men replied, glancing down at the dead Marine. “Foxtrot is gone, Arty is gone, no sign of the Marine detachment from the carrier save for bodies. We can’t find any survivors, no intact vehicles. Whatever rolled through here took them by surprise – killed some of the IFVs before they could even leave formation.”

“Plenty of dead Bugs, too,” the other scout added. “Based on the final radio transmissions between the LZ and the fleet, a whole army of the fuckers surrounded them and attacked from the top of the lake.” He pointed into the distance, Evan zooming in with his visor. The sloping banks were pocked with craters in places, scores of dead Bugs and Scuttler carcasses littering the area. “There must have been a lot of them. I haven’t seen a massacre like this since the first landings.”

“Some of this damage was done by our own guys,” the first scout said. “Rather than be overrun and lose the LZ, the company commander called in an airstrike on his own position. That was the last anyone heard of them before we arrived.”

“Ramos always was a stubborn asshole,” Simmons muttered, shaking his head in frustration. “This doesn’t make any sense. We were ambushed by a whole legion of Bugs, and we pulled through.”

“This must have been their main force,” Evan added, walking over to stand beside the sergeant. “Remember what Jade said, Sarge? Even if they marched half of their army into our guns, they’d still have enough bodies to outnumber us five to one. They were just trying to hold us up so we couldn’t stop whatever was happening here.”

“Our orders are to recapture the LZ and call in reinforcements,” Simmons said, glancing up at the ash-choked sky. “I’m surprised they weren’t waiting here for us, considering how much they seem to love ambushes. I guess the airstrikes did enough damage to make them think twice.”

“They probably felt comfortable taking on a mechanized company and a Marine regiment, maybe less so an entire battalion,” Evan replied. “The Kings seem to like staying mobile. I wouldn’t expect them to hold down a position if they didn’t have to. My guess is he’s going to pull back and wait for another opportunity to cause some chaos with whatever forces he has left.”

“Well, we have our orders,” Simmons continued. “Let’s secure the lake bed and see if we can find anyone still alive enough to tell us what the fuck went down here.”

They began to spread out, the remaining vehicles in the battalion splitting into companies, patrolling the cratered field of bodies and wrecks. There had been a dozen tanks, eight troop carriers, and sixteen artillery pieces left behind – all of them scattered about the lake bed in varying states of disassembly. They passed by some that had holes melted in their hulls from repeated plasma hits, slagging their armor plating to leave solid pools on the ground where the liquid metal had cooled. Others had been torn open by what might have been claws, while others had succumbed to the aerial bombardment, many of them still burning. There was enemy armor, too, just as many dead Scuttlers and Pangolins. There were bodies everywhere – human and Bug alike – few of them in any recognizable state thanks to the bombing.

“Nobody could have survived this,” Hernandez muttered as he stepped around a charred body. “Do you reckon they got the King?”

“I won’t believe it until I see the body,” Evan replied. “This guy leads from the back.”

“Is this common?” Aster asked, glancing at the sky warily. “Do humans often call in airstrikes on their own positions?”

“They would rather die than admit defeat,” Borkza replied as he stalked alongside her, slowing his long gait to match pace with his smaller counterparts. “It is sensible to submit to a stronger opponent, but the insects do not reason as civilized people do – they give no quarter. Like animals, they kill by reflex. Against such an opponent, there can be no surrender.”

“That’s why we call them ferals,” Jade added.

“I would have thought you’d love the idea,” McKay said, the green flames of a burning Scuttler reflecting off his visor. “Death and honor and all that.”

“Seeking glory through martyrdom is foolishness, not bravery,” Borzka scoffed. “Were this a war between two Borealan territories, it would never reach such a level of violence. The weaker party would submit when it became obvious that they could not prevail, and the conflict would end there. But this is not Borealis. These humans chose to spite their enemy rather than give them the satisfaction of a clean victory – an admirable feat.”

“I would prefer not to drop several thousand tons of ordnance on my own head if it can be avoided,” Collins grumbled as he made his way over to a ruined Puma. He did a double-take, stuttering into his mic. “G-guys! I got something here!”

He knelt, letting his XMR hang from its sling, the rest of the team hurrying to his side. As Evan peered over his shoulder, he saw that there was a body trapped beneath the twisted wreckage, partially buried in the mud. The man was alive, his suit putting out a weak IFF signal. Evan flashed back to the attack on the convoy, when he had woken up in a very similar situation, trapped in the mangled hull of his vehicle.

“He’s got a pulse!” Simmons said, waving the two Borealans over. “Get him out from under there! Garcia, radio for a medic!”

Borzka and Tatzi crouched, leveraging their feline strength to lift some of the heavy debris off the man, two of the Marines pulling him out from beneath the vehicle by the straps on his chest rig. Not knowing if his suit’s systems were even functional, Collins slid off his helmet gingerly. Inside was a man with a dark complexion, dried blood caked around his nose and mouth. He was still alert, blinking back at them with unfocused eyes.

“Are you alright?” Simmons asked. “Private Harris!” he snapped, reading off the man’s IFF tag to get his attention. “Can you speak?”

“S-Sergeant,” the man sputtered, Collins lifting his head a little so he could see them better. “I thought everyone was dead...”

“We’re from Delta company,” Simmons explained, going slowly. “We drove back to help. Can you tell me what happened here?”

“Fuckin’ Bugs happened,” Harris coughed. “They ambushed us, hit us with mortars and Scuttlers from the banks of the lake, then sent in waves of Drones. I dunno how they found the LZ. It was like they were waiting for us. They had entire squads of shielded Warriors – the things shrugged off our XMR fire and overwhelmed the Kodiaks, peeled them open like cans of tuna. There were too many ... Commander Ramos told the fleet to wipe out the site. The Beewolf pilots probably did their best, but it was a moshpit – they couldn’t avoid blue on blue. After that first bombing run, I dunno what happened.”

“We have you,” Collins said, lying him down on the ground. “You’ll be back up in orbit in no time flat.”

The squad stepped back to give the medics room as they came running, the Marines setting down a first aid kit beside the man, starting to remove pieces of his armor to better access his injuries. He wasn’t in too bad shape – there were no mortal wounds that Evan could spot, no excessive bleeding. Harris had probably been lying here beneath his IFV for hours before they’d stumbled across him.

“He’s in good hands,” Simmons announced, waving them onward. “Keep moving.”

It didn’t take them long to secure the landing zone again, the battalion encountering no resistance as they cleared the lake bed. There had only been a handful of survivors who had all been evacuated once they were certain that no anti-air Scuttlers remained in the area, and landers were bringing in replacement vehicles and personnel from other assault carriers to replenish the lost companies.

Evan watched as another of the boxy craft touched down, the four thrusters that were arranged around its square hull kicking up clouds of dust as it joined another four like it that were already unloading their artillery.

“Do you think we’re gonna miss the battle at the Ant Hill?” Hernandez asked, leaning against the hull of their IFV as he watched one of the landers take off. “We gotta be hours behind the other battalions now.”

“Are you sure that’s a bad thing?” Jade asked.

“I’m sure we’ll be underway again soon enough,” Evan added, glancing out into the dark forest beyond the banks of the lake. The trees were stripped of their branches, blackened by the heat of the orbital bombardment, but most were still standing tall. “They can’t afford to have us sitting on our hands for too long.”

Tatzi and Borzka were sitting on the dry mud nearby, taking the opportunity to eat some MREs while the company waited for new orders. Scarcely an idle moment went by where the Borealans weren’t eating, which wasn’t really a surprise, considering their size. The number of calories it must take to keep them fed would probably have been enough to sustain four or five humans. Their helmets were still on, but their visors were open. They could snap them shut fast enough to protect themselves from any surprise chemical attacks if the need arose.

Tatzi lifted her head as Simmons came walking towards them, an all too familiar purpose in his gait.

“Mount up,” he ordered, the two felines climbing to their feet. “We’re moving out.”

“Where are we going?” McKay asked.

“We’ve lost contact with one of the Timberwolfs that was sent out to search the forest surrounding the lake,” he replied, pounding on the hull of the IFV with his fist. The ramp began to lower, the team making their way to the back of the vehicle. “Something’s happened to them, and we’re going to find out what. Recon flights over the area picked up active IFF signatures, and they’ve located the vehicle, but there’s nowhere for them to land. Fleetcom needs boots on the ground, and we drew the short straw.”

“We’re not going on our own, are we?” Hernandez asked warily.

“Fuck no,” Simmons replied as they began to mount the ramp. “They’re sending the whole company. We have no idea what’s out there – the roaches that attacked the LZ could be regrouping for another go.”

They strapped into their seats, Evan tapping into the external camera feeds to watch as the IFV moved into formation with the rest of Delta. Twelve Kodiaks and eight Pumas fell into a rough column, a Kestrel trailing behind them to provide anti-air support. The convoy started to drive to the far bank of the lake bed, climbing towards the eerie forest beyond. There was enough room between the naked, towering trunks for the six-meter-wide tanks to make it through relatively easily, the lead vehicle taking them on a winding path through the bizarre terrain. There was no undergrowth, it had all been burned away, and the blast waves had flattened the ground in a way that looked wholly unnatural. The tree trunks stood tall in the ocean of ash, their leaves and branches stripped away, their bark scorched black. It was like driving through a vast field of onyx pillars, like something from Dante’s Inferno or some expressionist painting of Hell. The sky above was still choked with dust clouds, the vehicles igniting their headlights to illuminate their path, the bright beams blocked by the trees.

“Well, this is fuckin’ creepy,” Hernandez muttered. “Why are the trees here still standin’?”

“They were probably far enough from the epicenter of the nearest explosion to avoid being vaporized,” Garcia explained. “The heat from the railguns would have been enough to turn stone to glass at the epicenter, but most of the damage would have been done by the blast waves. Those will have spread for kilometers, flattening forests and wiping out anything on the ground. Wildfires would have followed, but that wouldn’t be enough to bring down trees this large.”

“I get why they said it would take eighty years for the ecosystem to recover,” Jade added.

“I heard forest fires are actually good for the land,” McKay volunteered. “Doesn’t it give the soil more nutrients or something?”

“Not if the entire top layer was turned to ash,” Garcia scoffed. “This place is gonna be a total dead zone for decades. Not to mention all the damage the dust in the atmosphere is going to do to the rest of the moon. This is why we don’t usually open up with mass orbital bombardment.”

They bounced over exposed roots and waded through dunes of ash as they went, the formation fanning out in a line to cover more ground when they neared the site of the lost scout vehicle. Evan could see it in the distance – a solitary, six-wheeled Timberwolf parked alone in the forest. There didn’t seem to be any obvious damage at a glance.

The convoy ground to a halt, the tanks establishing a safe perimeter as the Marines from two of the IFVs piled out, sweeping their rifles across the trees as they advanced towards the seemingly abandoned vehicle. Evan and his team were among them, Simmons taking the lead, lifting his wrist to check his display.

“No IFF tags in range,” he muttered, shouldering his XMR as they neared. “Either the crew are dead and their suits are offline, or there’s nobody home.”

The second team watched the trees nearby as Evan and McKay were ordered forward, the pair moving towards the open troop ramp at the rear. They were approaching the vehicle side-on, and they couldn’t see inside it from this angle. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Evan stopped beside the camouflaged hull, turning to give McKay a nod. When he returned it, the pair swung around, pointing their XMRs into the compartment.

“It’s empty,” Evan announced with a sigh of relief that he elected not to broadcast over the radio. “No sign of the crew. Nobody in the cab, either.”

“Fuck,” Simmons hissed. He hadn’t been hoping to find bodies, but this complicated matters, and Evan understood his frustration completely. “Alright, we’ll search the area. Jade, Aster, Cardinal – can you use your antennae? I don’t think anyone’s going to be firing nuclear sabots around here.”

“It should be safe,” Jade replied with a nod. “We breathe through spiracles, and those are filtered through our armor. We don’t have to inhale any ash to smell like the Borealans do.”

The three Jarilans reached up, opening the protective panels on their helmets, their long feelers uncurling. Evan watched Jade grimace through her visor as she scented the air, the feathery appendages waving in the wind.

“What does it smell like?” he asked.

“Like burning,” she replied sarcastically. The three made their way into the crew compartment of the Timberwolf, picking up the scents of its operators like bloodhounds, then they began to walk into the forest. Simmons waved to their IFV, and the vehicle began to follow after them, rolling along behind the team as it matched their pace.

“I’m getting something,” Aster announced, her two sisters moving over to join her.

“The crew came this way,” Jade confirmed, her antennae twitching. “These tracks are fresh – they stand out against the ash.”

“There were Bugs, too,” Cardinal added as she crouched low to the ground. “I smell a pheromone trail. No blood, though.”

“They took them,” Jade mused, turning back to the team as they waited nearby. “Why would they take them?”

“Hang on, they took the crew hostage?” Simmons demanded. He had a finger to the side of his helmet – probably already reporting their findings to the company commander. “Why? Bugs don’t take prisoners.”

“This has happened once before,” Cardinal said, hesitating for a moment as she looked to her counterparts for reassurance. “On Jarilo, when our father was taken by the Queen.”

“Sergeant Walker was captured by the hive,” Jade explained, relaying the story to the rest of the team. “The Queen wanted to find a way to communicate with him so that she could surrender to the Coalition.”

“Do you think they’re trying to do the same here?” Collins asked, a hint of hope creeping into his voice.

“The Queen of Jarilo surrendered because she was pushed to the brink of defeat,” Aster added, shaking her head incredulously. “Anything is possible – nobody can predict how Kerguela’s Queen might behave – but I don’t think it’s likely. Their resistance is still far too strong.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Evan said, checking that the shotgun beneath his XMR’s barrel was loaded. “We’re still getting them back.”

“The commander wants us to take point,” Simmons said. “Follow your noses, ladies. Or rather, your antennae.”

The three Jarilans led the way as the rest of the team followed behind them, the IFV trundling along at their rear. The blue icons of friendly units stood out against the dingy backdrop on Evan’s visor as Delta company moved with them, spreading out to their left and right flanks. They walked for what must have been a couple of klicks, tensions soaring, every tree trunk and drift of ash potentially hiding an ambush. This could very easily be another trick – another of the Red King’s ploys to draw them out where they were more vulnerable, but it was a trap that they had no choice but to spring. The UNN didn’t leave people behind.

As they marched through another patch of ankle-deep dust, Tatzi stopped, raising a clenched fist.

“Did you hear that?” she snarled.

“What is it?” Simmons whispered, scanning the nearby trees with his XMR.

Borzka reached up to remove one of the little caps on his helmet that covered his furry ears, rotating it like a radar dish as he listened intently.

“A cry for help,” he confirmed, pointing into the blackened forest. “That way!”

They changed course, jogging through the trees, Simmons calling it in as the rest of the company followed. After a couple of minutes, Evan’s dull human ears began to hear it too – the harrowing sound of someone screaming for aid echoing through the trees.

“I’m picking up a weak IFF signal,” McKay announced. “Got a lock on it.”

The vehicles rolled to a stop as they came upon a bizarre scene. Through the forest, maybe two hundred meters ahead, was a human figure. His clothes were those of a vehicle crewman – a pressure suit and a flak jacket, and his helmet was missing. He was strung up a good ten meters off the ground, strapped to the trunk of one of the charred trees with what looked like a mesh of silvery, glistening spider webs. It almost looked like some kind of native animal had tried to cocoon the man, but Evan knew better.

“Stalkers!” he warned, the team forming a rough circle to watch every angle. He hadn’t encountered one of the creatures first-hand yet, but intelligence reports had detailed engagements with them. They were practically invisible to thermal cameras until they started moving, and they attacked by ambush, using sticky webbing to trap unwary Marines before descending on them with their mantis-like scythes.

“This is a fuckin’ trap if I ever saw one,” Hernandez said, pulling his weapon tight against his shoulder as he glanced up at the naked treetops. “Fuckin’ things could be anywhere.”

“Stalkers don’t put out pheromones, but there were Drones here recently,” Jade clarified. “A few hours at most.”

“Help me!” the crewman wailed, his voice making Evan’s blood run cold. There was something primal, almost reflexive about his reaction to the sound, his heart pounding in his chest as he resisted the urge to rush to the man’s aid. He was injured – a red stain that had soaked through his pressure suit trailing down his right thigh, his face unnaturally pale.

The ground shook as a Kodiak rolled up behind them, the company commander climbing halfway out of the cupola on the turret to get a better look.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked over the radio, Evan’s helmet dampening the sound of the vehicle’s engine so that he could hear him clearly.

“Looks like a really obvious trap, sir,” Simmons replied. “They’ve got one of the missing crewmen webbed to a tree.”

“His vitals are rough, sir,” McKay added as he checked the display on his forearm. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Private Jade,” the commander said, leaning over the side of his tank to speak to her. She blinked back at him, surprised to be addressed directly. “What’s your take on this?”

“The area has certainly been boobytrapped, Commander,” she replied as she gestured into the trees ahead. “I’d expect mines and tripwires, maybe pitfalls, and Stalkers waiting in the trees.”

“Alright,” the commander muttered, settling back into his cupola. “I’m not playing this game. Bring in the Crocodile!”

After a few moments, another tank broke off from the formation and trundled its way over to them. This one had a shortened, stubby cannon when compared to its Kodiak counterparts, and there was a massive armored plow mounted on the front of its chassis. It was easy to see where the vehicle got its name, jagged prongs jutting from the scoop like teeth. It extended a trio of limb-like appendages, each one tipped with a flexible skid that slid along the ground ahead of it, giving it an oddly insectoid look.

“What the hell is that?” Aster asked as the team stepped aside to let the armored behemoth drive past.

“That’s a Crocodile ABV,” Collins replied, watching it roll off into the trees. “It’s a mine-clearing and breaching vehicle. It’s going to roll through and activate any traps the Bugs have set for us.”

“Let’s see the Stalkers ambush that thing,” Hernandez chuckled.

The Crocodile lowered its plow, those jagged teeth digging into the soil, churning up the top layer of ash and soil as it went like a tractor plowing a field. Those skids preceded it, designed to apply enough pressure to set off mines before they passed beneath the vehicle. It was equipped with line charges, too, but those would be dangerous to use in such close proximity to the captured crewman.

“Why do you think they did this?” Collins asked, watching the modified tank as it slowly cleared a path towards the man. It encountered a smaller tree, its tracks grinding up the earth as its engine roared, the charred trunk eventually succumbing to its weight. “What do they hope to accomplish?”

“Maybe they’re testing us?” Jade suggested. “Betelgeusians are very reactive – they adapt themselves to their environment and to the tactics of their enemies. My guess is that they’ve seen us go to great lengths to recover wounded Marines, even bodies, and they think they might be able to exploit that behavior in some way. It must be extremely alien to them – seeing us treat our people as anything other than expendable. The only reason Bugs recover their dead is to recycle them by feeding them to a Replete. The same fate awaits those who are too injured to recover.”

“That’s grisly,” Collins muttered. “I’d heard rumors that they eat their dead, but I thought it was just scaremongering...”

“It’s a sniper trap,” Hernandez added, getting their attention.

“A sniper trap?” Evan repeated.

“Yeah,” Hernandez replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he stood beside the idling IFV. “You wound a guy enough that he’s gonna holler for his buddies, but not enough to kill him, then you shoot anyone who comes to help.”

“That’s barbaric!” Jade hissed, planting her lower pair of hands on her wide hips as she held her XMR in the upper. “Surely the UNN doesn’t condone that?”

“Of course not,” Hernandez continued. “It’s a war crime. Used to happen, though. Durin’ the African wars, back before the Union was founded, the different factions used some real dirty tactics to get one over on each other. One of their favorites was to set up sniper traps. They had these little dog-sized, autonomous drones equipped with high-caliber rifles,” he continued as he lowered a hand to demonstrate their size. “The militias would put speakers on these things and play a sound file of someone screamin’ for help in whatever language their enemies spoke. When someone came to investigate, the drone would drop ‘em. No mercy, no hesitation, just pop. They didn’t get tired, they didn’t feel remorse, they’d just keep at it until someone destroyed them or their battery ran out of charge.”

“The African wars were ugly,” McKay added with a nod. “Drone tech was cheap and readily available at the time, and weapons manufacturers were pouring experimental gear into the continent like it was one giant proving ground. There were dozens of warring factions, governments and insurgencies alike, all using whatever they had on hand to win. Suicide drones, swarms of armed copters, loitering munitions. It’s the main reason the UN voted to ban autonomous weapons.”

“Wouldn’t they be helpful, though?” Aster asked as she cocked her head at him. “Used responsibly, they could save lives.”

“Doesn’t matter,” McKay replied with a shrug. “We choose to live by laws and moral principles,” he added as he gestured to the captive crewman. “If we just do whatever it takes to win, we’re no different from them. If you have to abandon your principles in order to come out on top, that’s no victory, because you’ve still lost what you were fighting for.”

“Could you justify that outlook in the face of extinction?” Aster asked, her antennae twitching skeptically.

“Honestly? I dunno,” McKay replied with a shake of his head. “What I do know is that if humanity hadn’t learned from our mistakes and chosen to abide by rules like these, we might have become just as much a plague on the Galaxy as the Bugs.”

The Crocodile neared the base of the tree that the crewman was strapped to, grinding to a stop, the vehicle’s commander slowly climbing out of the hatch on the turret with his PDW in hand. There had been no explosions from mines, no traps had been triggered, and the tank hadn’t fallen into any pitfalls. The two men had a brief exchange, Evan turning to glance at the company commander, following their conversation over the radio.